website newsblog portfolio

Menu

How are you today?

AUTHOR: MIHAEL GIBA

YEAR: 2009

PROCESSING SOFTWARE / FLASH ANIMATION / XML DATABASE /

Work, “How are you today?” Visualizes data collected with a web search engine Google.
I have designed software that collects information from top seven Croatian web news portals and visualizes current day status – positive or negative day.
Data that software is collecting presents search results for 10 negative and 10 positive keywords (e.g. death, murder, love, happiness …) on top seven Croatian news portals. Data that software has collected is used as ratio (e.g. 30% negative news and 70% positive news) and stored in database of days.
Day status is represented with ratio of red and green color – most common colors in statistical graphs. Data is represented on two flat screen monitors – first and bigger one is showing current day visualization, and smaller one is showing in loop number of days I define in the past.
Idea came from mass media power to design reality.
“How are you today?” Is a gadget for people who are easyly influenced with media and have lost their own critical thinking and accept all that is served in newspapers and TV. This work stereotypes society and provokes it to confront the influences and to criticize and question those influences, particularly from mass media.
Since the day that work is in function (12.1.2009) it is continuously storing data in the day database. From the collected data I generate computer renderings of a certain number of days and then I transfer those visualizations in the form of pictures / painting installation and present them with the “How are you today?” software.